Usually representing spirits, ancestors or the primordial couple, these figures were placed in shrines and treated with great respect. Through a wide range of style, scale, belief and function the couples depicted share a timeless, serene equality necessary to the continuity of their societies.
Urbanization, the African Child, and the Dying Culture of Play
Some of my fondest childhood memories—growing up in different cities in Nigeria, in the eighties and nineties—involve time spent playing outdoors. We had ample spaces for play. Our schools also encouraged and emphasized it. Beyond school, every neighbourhood had generous open spaces, and children turned them into makeshift soccer pitches, basketball courts and theatrical stages (depending on th...
Casa C / Ramos Castellano
Sao Vicente, Cape Verde archipelago, is a volcanic island, dry and arid, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, where the elements of nature are extreme and dominant, technology and hand labor are basic and not very specialized, life is simple and flows slowly, following the cycles of nature. A foreign customer, adventurous and without budget constraints, decided to build a home that contains his...
Antonio Esposito Reimagines the New City Of Mengomeyene In Equatorial Guinea With A Series Of Elaborate Graphics
In this set of hand drawings, Antonio Esposito reimagines the city of Mengomeyene in a series of Graphic images for the foundation plan of the new city in Equatorial Guinea.
Lubango Centre / Promontorio
With 9-storey, the building includes residential, offices and shops served by a common access and underground parking. On the ground floor, a sheltered and cross-ventilated open gallery generates a shaded and fresh space, allowing direct access to the shop fronts, to the residential and offices lobbies, and to a small backyard coffee-shop terrace.
Refilwe Business Node Upgrades / Holm Jordaan Architects and Urban Designers
Refilwe nodal transformation forms part of an urban network of upgrades supported by the Neighbourhood Development Partnerships Grant, National Treasury, in the Metsweding area, City of Tshwane. This upgrade albeit a small and humble urban intervention, serves as an example of a local community taking great pride in the renewal of public space.
Lideta Mercato Market / Vilalta Architects
The Lideta Mercato was supposed to be a shopping mall like many in the city of Addis Ababa. After analyzing the existing ones we realized that they have 3 weak points: they are empty because the shops are too big, their glass facades create heating and bring too much light in the inside and their image does not reflect Africa, neither Ethiopia’s character. On the other hand, the Old Mercato of ...
Dyeji Building / Costalopes
The Dyeji Building is part of the Bay of Luanda Parcel 3 development scheme located at the narrowest part of the Ilha do Cabo promontory. The scheme consists of a total of 57 plots (its limits being marked by the Hotel da Marinha in the north-east and the Clube Náutico in the south-west).
Soleluna Mixed Use Development / Light Earth Designs
Light Earth Designs is spearheading yet another low-carbon building technology in the region. At the heart of Kigali, is Soleluna- a project which is retaining, re-furbishing and redeveloping its existing premises with a high profile multi-storey mixed use development that showcases innovative low carbon building technologies.
Francis Kéré Unveils Burkina Faso's New National Assembly in Ouagadougou
At the 2016 Venice Biennale, Francis Kere unveiled, as part of the exhibition “in search of a new Ouagadougou” the schemes for the design of the Burkina Faso National Assembly. In the transformative time for Burkina Faso, the scheme can be summed as tackling the fundamental question of “How do we move forward”. It consequently not only seeks to address the democratic values of transparency, ope...
Kericho Sacred Heart Cathedral / John McAslan Architects
The Sacred Heart Cathedral of Kericho is located 250 km west of Nairobi, Kenya. It lies within the Highlands, close to the Rift Valley, enjoying magnificent views across tea plantations and surrounding hills.The Cathedral's great inclined roof will become a distinctive form in the rolling panorama of Kericho's hills and valleys when it completes in 2015. Strikingly crafted, the building's simpl...
Empower Shack / Urban Think Tank
While South Africa is usually seen as a source of stability and prosperity in its region, approximately 7.5 million people live in informal settlements and the country faces an overall housing shortage of 2.5 million units. Arising from this context, Empower Shack is an interdisciplinary development project directed by U-TT and the local NGO Ikhayalami Development Services, in collaboration wit...
10x10 Housing Initiative / MMA Architects
Is it possible to develop a low cost house without using the conventional brick + mortar + concrete mix? This was the question posed by the Cape Town based [design Advocacy] organization, Design Indaba, through the 10 x 10 housing project competition. The competition invited 10 teams, each consisting of one international and one South African Architect to design for a family in freedom Park Ar...
Oasis Kindergarten Kibera / Maisha Trust
At the heart of Kibera slums located in Nairobi Kenya sits a small beautiful, well laid out kindergarten school. Kibera, the largest slum in Africa, and one of the biggest in the world, is home to over 250,000 impecunious dwellers. The make-up of Kibera comprises some of the most modest dwelling spaces for any urban set-up, not to mention the capital city of one of the fastest growing economies...
Datum Antique: Sasaki Associates’ Green Lung of Cairo
In 1984, His Highness the Aga Khan announced his decision to finance the creation of a park for the citizens of the Egyptian capital. The only central location that was of suitable scale was the derelict Darassa site, a 30-hectare (74-acre) mound of rubble that had been a debris dump for 500 years. Al-Azhar Park, undertaken by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, has since proven to be both a popula...
The Outreach Foundation Community Centre / Local Studio
The Outreach Foundation Community Centre was completed in early 2015, and is one of the first new social infrastructure projects to be built in Hillbrow since the 1970’s. The project is situated within the broader Hillbrow Lutheran Church/ Friedenskirche precinct, a site given to the Lutheran church by Paul Kruger at the turn of the century. The actual building site is the staggered rooftop of ...
Freedom Park Museum / GAPP + Mashabane Rose Architects + MMA
Situated on a prominent "koppie" (hill) overlooking Tshwane, Freedom Park’s vision is to become “a leading national and international icon of humanity and freedom.” Its Mission is “to provide a pioneering and empowering heritage destination that challenges visitors to reflect upon our past, improve our present and build on our future as a united nation.”(1) At the core of this mission is reconc...
Freedom Park, Phase 1 / GAPP + Mashabane Rose Architects + MMA
Situated on a prominent "koppie" (hill) overlooking Tshwane, Freedom Park’s vision is to become “a leading national and international icon of humanity and freedom.” Its Mission is “to provide a pioneering and empowering heritage destination that challenges visitors to reflect upon our past, improve our present and build on our future as a united nation.”(1) At the core of this mission is reconc...
Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa MOCAA / Heatherwick Studios
Thomas Heatherwick's new MOCAA establishment in Capetown is almost nearing completion, and the building takes over from what was once one of the tallest building on the Capetown Skyline. Poised to hold one of the most analytic and comprehensive African art collections in the world, the project seeks to give Africa one of its major institutions of African art. Heatherwick tries to mimic the ches...
British Council, Freetown / Manser Practice
The British Council is perhaps the biggest export of architectural heritage across the world, comparable only in second place to the Dutch. The latest addition to the portfolio of architecture in Africa is the Freetown British council, a building that has now become synonymous with social and cultural endeavors in Sierra Leone. The building alludes to clean and entrenched values of embassies bu...
Maisha Film Garden / Tamassociati
The new headquarters of “Maisha Film Lab” want to synthesize life in cinema and architecture. Starting with the name Maisha, which means ‘life’ in Kiswahili, we thought about the project as a film sequence inspired by the evolution of life.The walking path, which develops in the garden, begins in childhood and develops through different stations in the evolution of the human being until the fin...
The Cities of Cogo & Corisco Master Plans / Page Think Architects
The influence of high modernism and revolutionary schemes to complement growing economies and cities remains a contested issue. Being particularly of concern to fast developing countries and the impact of modernism to societies with rich local traditions and norms, designers cannot shy away from making their contributions to these debate. Drawing master plans and re-envisioning their cities now...
Brixton Studio House / 26'10 South Architects
Thorsten Deckler from the Johannesburg based Architectural studio 26'10 South calls the Brixton House a compact live-work compound for an architect couple and their young children. It represents a well served spatial arrangement that has undergone several changes over its lifetime into a meaningful mixture of retail and residential components is meaningful and well deserved and their ability t...
Taxi Rank No. 2 / 26'10 South Architects
Diepsloot is the kind of environment that requires input from the best, most courageous and inspired architects. It is not every architect who would have the patience and willingness to learn from this environment, or the humility necessary to create opportunities and bring human dignity to it, where it is most needed. The reality is that most people on earth live within conditions of informali...
Malabo New St. Isabel International Airport / Independent Architectural Diplomacy IAD
The MSI New International Airport is the first and last place of exchange between the traveler and his land host; in essence, a large door and approach. From this point of view, the building needs to be prestigious and express the culture and identity of the city or the country it represents, just as a monument, a public place or an official building. At the same time, it is a symbol of technol...
Soweto Theatre / Afritects
You rarely see the impact that social projects ground upon their environment until you hit the ground running. The Soweto theatre is one such project. Setting foot on it is an absolute marvel. It is an art piece in itself and a canvas for art, a duality that theatres have been known for. The theatre is the culmination of both national and global best practices in theatre design. Various local a...
Hilton Hotel Windhoek/ Wasserfall Munting Architects
The new Hilton (Eliakim Namundjebo Plaza) Hotel in Windhoek, Namibia, forms the first phase of the proposed Freedom Square development, an 80,000m² mixed-use precinct in the heart of the capital set to transform the urban face and dynamics of the CBD.
Casa Port Railway Station/ AREP
Casablanca is a modern city in Morocco with a concentration of Art Deco and international style and modernist buildings which tries to draw a lot from the vernacular Moorish architecture of the area. It is a modern city which has undergone change in a short time from experimental lifestyle of the residents. The city urban planning is also undergoing reorganization hence the Casa Port Station fi...
Lagos State Considers ‘Makoko Floating School’ Into Development Plan
The Lagos State Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban development announced its consideration for incorporating the internationally acclaimed prototype floating structure ‘Makoko Floating School’ in a regeneration plan for Makoko Waterfront community. Makoko Floating school is designed by NLÉ Work – an architecture, design and urbanism practice focused on developing cities and communities. T...
Riviera Apartments / Domaine Public Architects
The Riviera apartments mark a fresh look at the parti of residential design at a massive scale. It looks at reorganizing the riviera neighborhood into a small urban community that follows a public utility versus private spaces, all within the same economic scale and axis. It reveals a rather innate look at the process of apartment planning and the incorporation of gardens within the space furth...
National Park of Mali / Kere Architecture
Amidst the senseless construction of commercial urban projects in Bamako, a welcoming vision of nature and beauty stands at the entrance of the National Park. The renowned architect Diébédo Francis Kéré, Aga Khan Award for Architecture recipient in 2004, was commissioned to redevelop 8 existing structures and design a primary and secondary gate, an entry building, a youth and sports centre, a ...
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